XPost: alt.folklore.computers
From: bowman@montana.com

On Wed, 7 Jan 2026 13:38:49 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:

> On 2026-01-06 17:30, John Ames wrote:
>> On Tue, 6 Jan 2026 13:19:54 +0100 "Carlos E.R."
>>  wrote:
>>
>>> Turbo Pascal had [...]
>>
>> Sure did! But TP didn't roll out 'til 1983, thirteen years into the
>> language's existence.
>>
>>> I don't think anyone used the original flavor of the language.
>>
>> The ISO standard wasn't finalized 'til 1983, the same year as TP; even
>> UCSD Pascal didn't come around 'til 1977. But it was being used for
>> teaching well before that, and Kernighan's essay was published in '81,
>> so people were most definitely using (or trying to use) earlier forms
>> of the language for stuff.
>>
>>
> Ah. I did not meet it till about the time of TP 2.

The timeline is important. I'll try to construct my experience. I was
doing contract work for Sprague in Sanford ME in the early '80s. Most of
their engineers were University of Maine graduates and UM used Pascal as a
didactic language. That would mean their Pascal courses were in the late
'70s, given the time to graduate and find a job.

These were electronics engineers, not CS students. Like when I learned
FORTRAN IV, the assumption was you would use computers as a tool during
your career, not that it would be your career. The Pascal they had learned
was inadequate for what they were trying to do.

In another context I also worked with chemists in the '80s who had been
taught Fortran. Their code was pretty horrible but it did get the job done
and I was able to adapt it.

Colleges don't always make great choices and do their students a
disservice. At one time University of Montana used Modula-2, another Wirth
production. Later they chose Java after being offered financial incentives
by Sun. (I think it was before Oracle).  Arguably a better choice although
it didn't do much when we were looking for C/C++ programmers.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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